Description
Book SynopsisI lived through the Dutroux affair from the inside, and all these years I have kept silent about it - about my 'personal' Dutroux Affair, my time in the company of the most hated psychopath in Belgium. I need to write this book for three reasons: so that people stop giving me strange looks and treating me like a curiosity; so that no one ever asks me any more questions ever again; and so that the judicial system never again frees a paedophile for 'good behaviour'.'
'The Dutroux Affair' shook the whole of Europe. In the middle of the immense machinery of investigation and justice there was Sabine Dardenne herself, Dutroux's last victim. She was held captive for eighty days - and survived. Far from sensationalising the horror, her story, dignified and restrained, is ultimately uplifting. Says Sabine Dardenne, 'I choose to live'.
Trade ReviewA moving tale of courage and survival. Extraordinary strength ... one comes away from her book shocked, angered and deeply humbled * Mail Like the scariest fairy tales, it involves a little girl, a secret dungeon and a monster. But it is not a fairy tale: it is true . . . I have never read a more harrowing book. . . unbearable were it not for the character - brave, difficult, honest an *
Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday * ‘A compelling memoir... a bold and dignified book’ *
Observer * ‘Here is a book that refuses to cushion the reader with assurances of redemption and happily-ever-after - it is primarily written not as an aid to healing, but a call for justice. . . One comes away from her book shocked, angered and deeply humbled’ *
Mail * ‘direct, unpretentious, chatty, feet-on-the-ground. Sometimes shockingly so’ *
